


I will walk beside you all the days of my life

by Aethelar



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, but there's sadness at first, everything, newt makes everything better tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 18:33:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8725750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelar/pseuds/Aethelar
Summary: I just want some happy times for Graves, you know? And Newt seems the ideal person to give them to him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This universe will be fueled by prompts and fluff so oh god please send me prompts you don't understand how much i want to write the fluff.
> 
> Original piece written for Anonymous on [tumblr](http://aethelar.tumblr.com):
> 
> if you're taking prompts could you do graves and newt, something about newt looking after graves after he was rescued from grindelwald?

I started thinking about it and I had to stop for a bit because oh god, Graves, imagine coming back after that and just trying to pretend everything’s fine because you know that’s what he’d do but it’s _not fine at all_  and why did you do this to me. Why.

Because it’s not fine. It’s so far from not fine.

Graves was trapped and fighting for his life, and no one noticed he was gone.

How heartbreaking is that?

And that’s the crux of it right there, that’s the start of it, but that’s not the end of it. It can’t be the end of it, or even the middle of it, because somewhere in between the start and the end Graves has to recover, and somewhere in the recovery period Newt starts hanging around with Tina, and somewhere in  _that_ hanging out with Tina became an excuse for hanging out with Graves.

It happens slowly. Graves is not a man to rush, Newt recognises this, but that’s fine. Plenty of things aren’t to be rushed.

He says hello, when Graves comes to ask Tina how the new filing system works, or what the newest recruit’s name is, or where the case-notes are for a mis-managed trial.

He brings three pastries, not two, when he stops by at Jacob’s bakery on the way to his and Tina’s lunch meetups.

He smiles at Graves, when he’s meandering his way through the corridors at MACUSA to get yet another registration form for yet another magical beast that, probably, is breaking yet another law.

Graves nods at him. Eats pastries. Eventually, even, smiles.

Newt comes to visit Tina and he sits on the corner of Graves’ desk and swings his heels while he waits for her meeting to finish. He hands Graves his croissant (plain, butter-rich, with a cup of coffee so hot and black it hurts to hold) and takes out his iced niffler bun (sweet, sticky, extra fruit and a cherry on top). Graves passes him a mug of rich red tea, and they wait.

Newt tells him about the mooncalf calves and the progress he’s making, however slowly, on repealing the creature ban. He tells him about Jacob’s expanding bakery and Queenie’s expanding stomach, and the plans the pair of them have for their expanding family. He tells Graves about Pickett’s latest escapade involving the grindylow’s habitat, a rather obscene amount of stinksap, and what might once have been a velvet-lined hat box.

Graves eats his pastry and drinks his coffee, and when Tina comes out to collect her friend for lunch Graves even manages to wave goodbye. Newt waves back, hand movements too large, smile too wide, but when he looks at Graves he sees _Graves_ and that’s important.

That’s the most important thing.

Because Newt met Grindelwald and Newt met Graves, but Grindelwald had none of Graves hurts. None of the care he takes, now, to say good morning to his aurors, to be recognisable to them. None of the fear he carries, now, that no one will notice if he dies. Grindelwald lacked Graves scars, but beyond that, he lacked the core that made Graves work late and start early and walk his streets until he knew the feel of his city by the roughness of the pavement beneath his feet. Graves protects his city because it breathes, it has a heart and it _beats_ , it lives and it suffers and Graves protects it because he cares.

Grindelwald couldn’t see that. Or if he could, he couldn’t mimic that. Graves’ aurors couldn’t notice anything strange when Grindelwald wore Graves’ face with none of Graves’ care behind it, and _that’s_ the heartbreak. Graves is a man who loves his city and has built his life around that love. It is how he defined himself as a person, the legacy he wanted to leave behind.

And no one noticed. No one noticed! Grindelwald sauntered through the corridors with hate festering in his heart and disdain prowling through his words, and people said yes, this is Graves. This is the man we know.

(Graves sits alone at his desk and his aurors are afraid or ashamed or some messed up combination of both and none of them dare speak to him, and he wonders what the point was and what good it did to care because the city tore itself apart all the same –

When he walks through the office the silence as he passes rings like dying in his wake.)

But that was the start.

The middle is Newt. The middle is shy glances and shyer smiles. The middle is pastries and tea and coffee so black it made Newt gag when he tried it and made Graves laugh at his complaints. The middle is fleeting touches, heads bowed together; the middle is Tina pausing at the open door and deciding to come back later, to give them just a minute more alone.

The middle, on a day in November when rain made Newt’s hair curl around his collar and the windows in Graves’ office steamed from the warming charms inside, is a hand curling around the back of Newt’s head and the slide of his shirt under Graves’ fingers. The middle is the tentative press of lips that say,

You would recognise me, if I was replaced.

You would care, if I was gone.

Wouldn’t you?

The weight of Newt’s kiss and the dart of his tongue to reach out and taste, the smile he can’t hide and the way his hands can’t touch enough, the length of Graves’ body hot and warm against his rain-cold skin –

These things say, Yes.

_Yes._

On the other side of the desk, a cup of coffee and a mug of tea grow cold. On the other side of the door, Tina mumbles a locking charm and tells the visitor she’s sorry, Mr Graves is in an important meeting and can’t be disturbed. On the other side of the corridor are an office full of people who didn’t notice when Graves stopped coming to work and a Dark Lord took his place.

These things are the middle. These things are healing and learning to smile, these things are being afraid and falling in love and making it through each day because there’ll be coffee and pastries and someone who cares that Graves exists.

The end, though, the end is better.

The end is silver-grey hairs and an aching knee, the end is being years too old to keep on doing this and years too soon to ever stop, the end is a tug on his hand and an insistent demand to hurry up or they’ll miss it –

The end is being dragged up a mountain to see a harpy’s first flight, and feel the burn of pride when the chick loops round his head and trills hello. The end is being dragged down a beach to the low tide and kneeling in the water to be bowled over by an overgrown selkie pup. The end is being dragged up the steps to the Kowalski door and smelling cake on the air, and having not one but two strawberry-blonde menaces hanging off his legs and asking what presents he brought them this time.

The end is coffee and tea and croissants and niffler buns, sticky kisses in the kitchen and jubilant kisses in the pouring rain. The end is the moment of dismay when Newt says he has things under control, and the moment of action when Graves leaps in with spellfire blazing to save Newt from his poor definition of control. The end is an old house, an old bowtruckle, an old couch with an old blanket. The end is two old men squished into the comfy end with their elbows in each others’ ribs and laughter hidden in each others’ hair.

The end, you see, is a man who was loved, and that is a thing that Grindelwald couldn’t even begin to replace.

**Author's Note:**

> (yes pickett grows old with them in my mind what else do you expect i love him ok?)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Fantastic Ficlets and Where I Post Them](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8747773) by [Aethelar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelar/pseuds/Aethelar)




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